Peace With God

Leviticus 19 as a Sermon on Holiness in Covenant Life

Turn with me once again, please, to Leviticus chapter 19. Leviticus chapter 19. Let us beseech the Lord's help and assistance as we seek to understand and apply His truth. Our gracious Heavenly Father, as we have these few moments together to consider Your truth and Your law, we would ask that You would protect us from distraction, that You would give us understanding, that You would give us hearts that yield obedience to You.

And Lord, may we be given minds that can recall and understand and remember and be prepared to be servants of Yours in a world where Your truth and Your law is under direct attack. As we have opportunity, may we give a proper response that honors You.

We pray in Christ's name. Amen. As most of you know, we have been doing a series of studies when I have the opportunity of filling the pulpit from the Holiness Code, specifically looking already at Leviticus chapter 18, and now looking at Leviticus chapter 19.

We cannot, of course, repeat everything that we have said before in regards to the fundamental issues that need to be brought to a study of God's law, but certainly, as we have already read this section together, you noted that there are many different laws.

In fact, I was looking at the attempt on the part of the editors of the New American Standard Bible that I have before me to summarize, and the best they could do for verse 9 to the end of the chapter was sundry laws.

That's the best they could come up with. And certainly, many of the commentaries, likewise, in essence, make reference to the fact that, well, you know, it's pretty much impossible to outline chapter 19 in any meaningful fashion.

It just seems in the minds of many to be a jumble of various laws and topics rather haphazardly thrown together. I don't think that's really what we have, however. It almost sounds to me, especially in light of the fact that it says, Yahweh spoke to Moses saying, Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I, Yahweh your God, am holy.

We have in essence here a sermon, a sermon delivered by Moses to the people of God that illustrates for them what it means to live in covenant with God. Now, you may have noticed, I think once I made the mistake and didn't do it, but I tried as I read the text to each time that the divine name appears to use the divine name.

Now, why do I do that? Well, it is a Jewish tradition, a post-Christian Jewish tradition to not pronounce the divine name Yahweh. I do not believe that we as Christians are in some way bound by this Jewish tradition.

You need to be aware of it should you be talking to a Jewish person. If you want to offend them immediately, you might want to use that divine name in that way. But if you don't, then you might not want to go that direction.

But the reality is that that divine name is God's covenant name. It is important in recognizing that he reveals himself by that name in the covenant that he establishes with his people. And so what we have in Leviticus, as we've mentioned before, is the solution to the problem that God is now dwelling with his covenant people.

And that raises issues. That has raised problems. We have already seen a number of times in the narrative of the Old Testament that, well, when God dwells amongst his people, he expects his people, therefore, to reflect that reality.

And that's going to mean that when sin comes into the camp, when there is rebellion in the camp, that there is going to be judgment. And so the question automatically comes before the mind of man, well, if God is going to dwell amongst his people, what kind of people should we be in light of the fact that God is dwelling amongst us?

And so what we have in Leviticus is guidance. Guidance for those who would like to know how it is that God's people should live in light of the presence of God amongst them. And the overarching theme, therefore, of the 19th chapter is found right there in the second verse.

"...Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I, Yahweh your God, am holy.". Now, most of us Christians who have read at least 1 Peter a few times are well aware of the fact that this very phrase, You shall be holy, for I am holy, appears in the New Covenant Scriptures in the New Testament and is taken as a fundamental given that just as God's people in the Old Testament were called to be holy, so too we who have embraced faith in Jesus Christ have repented of our sins before God, have entered into a relationship where we, likewise, are called to be holy because the God we serve is holy.

That has not changed. In fact, we've already talked about the importance of seeing the fundamental nature of God's law, and when we look into the New Testament, you see over and over again, for example, the Apostle Paul, he talks about sin at the church in Corinth, and he doesn't have to go into a long exposition about the fact that the kind of sexual sin found there in the church at Corinth is an abomination in God's sight and is against God's will because that had been laid out in God's law.

And so when the vice list comes in 1 Corinthians 6, there's really nothing overly new there. It's very clear that it's being drawn from the Old Testament law and that the holiness that was reflected was to be reflected in the lives of God's people all the way back in the book of Leviticus is still to be part and parcel of the Christian experience.

And if there's any difference at all, it is the fact that we now, by the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, have a desire to glorify God in light of the great price that has been paid for our redemption in Christ Jesus.

We don't just have shadows and types to illustrate these things for us. We have fulfillment to illustrate these things for us. We're indwelt by the Spirit of God and therefore, when we have this statement that you shall be holy, for I, Yahweh your God, am holy, that to an Israelite who is unregenerate, and we certainly see plenty of them.

They're generally the ones being wiped out by plagues and various other things during this period of time. To the Israelite who has not had that change of heart, has not circumcised their heart, these laws would exist as restraints against which many of them would chafe.

But to the regenerate child of God, even in that day, and certainly in our day, when we hear what is pleasing to God, when we hear these words, you shall be holy, for I, Yahweh your God, am holy, it should be the natural response of the Christian heart to say, yes, I want to be like my God.

If He is holy, I want to be holy. That should be a natural thing. I mean, the heart that has bowed the knee to the Lordship of Christ. Maybe it's easier for some people to start here, but we have frequently in the New Testament this idea of being like Christ, of being conformed to His image, being made like Him.

Well, what is Christ like? Is He not absolutely holy? Is He not one who has shown us what the holiness of God is? If we want to be like our Savior, that is perfectly in harmony with this statement that we want to be like our God.

Now, obviously, we recognize that we are creatures. We cannot be as God is in so many of His attributes and perfections. But we should desire to reflect who He is in our lives, in every aspect of our lives.

Now that term holy, you shall be holy, is reflected throughout the chapter in the fact that when we think of holiness, we think appropriately of moral and ethical holiness, purity, righteousness in that sense.

But as you know, that term holy also has the sense of separation, uniqueness in the sense of when something was made holy to the Lord, it was separated from its normal usage and made to be something that was very special before God.

That made it holy, separated, different. And some of the laws that we will see here that strike us today as somewhat odd really have their root in being different within the context in which Israel found itself.

And hence, when we seek to make application today, when we seek to understand how we would be holy today, we can learn that holiness is not going to be found in worldliness. It's not going to be found in trying to dress like, speak like, act like, and think like the world around us, especially when we live in a day and age that world is in full-scale, open, acknowledged rebellion against God and His ways.

And so, I think we can, in a sense, in an overarching sense, see that this entire section gives to us a sermon. A sermon of what it means to walk as a covenanted believer before Yahweh and to seek to be holy as He is holy.

That means that these various laws, everything from reverencing your father and your mother to not wearing a garment of two kinds of material put together and treating the stranger rightly and to rise up before the gray-headed.

I wish it said something about the bald-headed there, but gray-bearded maybe at least gets somewhere close to that. All of these different things. And for some people, we understand if they've never been exposed to the law of God before, how is it that treating your parents and the elderly, loving your neighbor as yourself, how is that related to offering a guilt offering for having had sex with a slave or not gleaning the corners of your field?

How do you put all that together? But I hope we've laid a foundation so that you're not amongst those who go, ah, I can't even see how these things fit together. There actually is a relationship between all of them.

There is a relationship between honoring the aged and not gleaning the corners of your field. Now, we could just very simplistically say it's because we're doing what God said to do. But we want to see more deeply what the relationship actually is.

In both, we are seeking to be holy because our God is holy and our God has demonstrated a concern for the way He has created the human family and therefore the human family functions properly when there is a respect for parents and there is a respect for the elderly.

It is not functioning correctly when young people feel that they have nothing to learn from those who have gone before them. And in the same way, the not gleaning of the corners of the field demonstrates that God is concerned about those who are poor.

You see, it's not difficult to see why we have that section in Leviticus 19. It's difficult for us to really think too much about having lived in a day where there wasn't a fries or a bashes within driving distance.

But trust me, those wonderful, well-stocked, normally very nice and cool places are a new invention in the history of humanity. Generally, in times past, if you lived in a city which only a very small portion of the humankind could live in, you might have the market square and it would be a dusty, dirty place, but that's where you would get your staples and your food items from.

But for the most of human history, you had to grow it yourself. And the idea of having the great advantages that we have today makes it difficult for us to understand that in those days, especially depending upon weather, depending upon drought, they didn't have reservoirs.

They couldn't truck water in. They couldn't bring things in from someplace else. If there was a drought, people died. And given the economy and given the number of people who would be there, you would always have those people that were on the margins.

They were just in that area of survival. That's why family was so important. Families took care of each other. And the people of God were to love one another, to care for one another. And so if you had a field and you sent your workers out, you were allowed to harvest your crop.

You were allowed to sell your crop. You were allowed to use it for you and your family if you had excess. If God blessed your fields and gave you the rain and the sun, there was everything good about that.

If you could store some up, that was wonderful and great. But, but you were not to go all the way out to the edge. You know, it's sort of like you used to have those combines, you know, and you'd see them.

I'd go visit my grandmother in Kinsley, Kansas. Kinsley, Kansas. Sort of hard to find on a map to be perfectly honest with you. Just a little wide spot in the road. And we'd go out there during the summer and you'd see these fields and you'd see how they were plowed.

But, you know, you could always tell, well, you know, the harvest machine's this big and when you turn a corner, there's sort of a spot there that doesn't get caught. And so there would be, you know, you'd see how they would even plow the field to try to minimize that as much as possible.

You wanted to get as much done as you could. But the reality is that the commandment is you're to leave a little something there. Why? So the poor can come. The poor can get some grapes in the vineyard.

And if some fall on the ground, you're not supposed to pick them up. Oh, well, wow, you're making the poor pick them up. Yeah, that's what you're making them do. But you're providing them with sustenance.

If they're willing to do the work, they can provide themselves with food. They can eat. That's the important part. And the idea is you don't send them out there and say, I want every single grape. I want every single head of grain.

You just make sure that there's nothing left. Because I want it all. This was a mechanism of helping to care for the poor in the land. It was to provide it. They had to work to get it. Shocking as that may be, but it was something that was provided in God's law.

And what does it demonstrate? That there is a likeness to the God who has been so kind to redeem an unworthy people. If we are to be like him, then we respect the elderly, respect our parents. See, all these things reflect upon our God and our desire to be like him.

And so I think there is a connection. I think there is something that puts all these things together and allows us to see these things together. But let me please note one other thing before we start looking specifically and working through the chapter as best we can in light of the different topics that are presented.

Some of you may have heard a fairly lengthy response that I did a few weeks ago to a Baptist ethicist, a scholar from Mercer University by the name of David Gushie. Dr. Gushie has become an advocate of homosexuality and quote-unquote gay Christianity in our day.

And he gave a presentation at a particular forum last year and I responded to that entire presentation on my program. And at one point, I could not help but with some level of humor note his statement.

He basically, toward the conclusion, was saying that if we really want to reflect Jesus' love for all people, if we really want to be representatives of Christ, then we need to stop quoting texts from Leviticus and start loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Think about that for just a moment. Let me remind you of Leviticus 19, verse 18. But you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am Yahweh. When Jesus said we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, he was quoting from the book of Leviticus.

He was quoting from this very chapter which is sandwiched right between Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20, which of course are the two chapters that he was saying we need to stop quoting from in the first place.

This kind of attitude is absolutely all around us. And you may not realize it yet, but you will discover over the next couple of months or years that if you have dialogue and communication with people that you thought were right with you in their views of the Bible, profession of faith and the Lordship of Christ, Christian ethics and morality, in reality there is a gulf fixed between you.

And many people take various views of these texts, but they have bought into the whole idea that, well, all this stuff back here, we might be able to use some of the stories for flannel board and keep the young 'uns interested during Sunday school, but the reality is we're not under law, we're under grace.

And so that stuff, it's just not relevant anymore. And we shouldn't be looking at, they didn't know about loving, monogamous, lifelong relationships back then. And so what was said in Leviticus 18 and 20, we shouldn't even mention these things.

Now, of course, we happen to know that in many nations in the world today, you can't mention these things unless you really want to have your entire life savings wiped out trying to defend yourself against the lawsuits that will inevitably result, and that is right around the corner for all of us.

I truly believe that to be the case. I'm not trying to be a scaremonger. I truly think that it is the case. But this idea that, in essence, you can dismiss what we have in Leviticus because, well, we all wear shirts that have mixed material.

And so if that's verse 19, and verse 18 is love your neighbor as yourself, well, we just can't see any connection between these things. And so we just can't really make these things normative any longer.

It's just ancient morality, and it was relevant once. It's not relevant to us today. Many people have already adopted that view. Sadly, I would say a large portion of evangelicals have probably not even read all the way through Leviticus 19 or all of Leviticus itself, or if they did, they've already forgotten it.

And so they don't recognize that to say that Leviticus no longer has anything to say to mankind in the 21st century is to say that love of neighbor, respect of parents, treatment of the stranger in the land, all of the tremendous, positive, absolutely necessary for any society to flourish positive teachings of this text, likewise, have no moral bearing any longer as well.

So obviously on just a very basic level, if I were to have someone say to me, well, we just can't take that stuff seriously anymore, I would say, so you can't take seriously respect for father and mother?

You can't take seriously proper payment to the worker? It's fascinating. I've got a lot of political liberals that love to dismiss the book of Leviticus, but I'm a little surprised they don't seem to recognize the importance of such things as not doing injustice in the land, about proper payment to the worker, about not swearing falsely, about the ways of a hired man are not to remain with you all night until morning.

When you have someone who works for you, you treat them properly. You pay them according to what you have said you would pay them. That's absolutely necessary for any economic system to function. It's just basic justice, and yet it's right in the middle of Leviticus.

And so if you're going to say, well, you know, mixed threads means it's all irrelevant. What it really means is maybe you ought to think about what mixed threads meant to them at that time and keep what is so obvious to you, and that is that you need to be just in your dealings with other people.

Maybe that's the real problem. I know we deal with a people today in our land that are ignorant of these things. It's amazing to think of how almost everybody in our land 150 years ago had read all the Bible because it was part of how you learned to read.

They couldn't get away from these things. They knew they were there. Now we deal with a world that is just absolutely ignorant of what is actually found in these texts. We cannot be ignorant of them because for us, one of the most practical things to be able to do when someone raises these objections is to know a chapter like this well enough to say, so you're saying that this verse is irrelevant.

Do you know what the verses around it are about? They won't know. They won't know. You can open it up. So all this positive justice that we are to do, all this truthfulness and all the fact that we are to treat the stranger in the land and we're not to have any type of injustice in our judging and in our judicial system.

Oh my Lord, if that were the case. All that stuff we don't have to worry about anymore. Well, no. Then maybe there is something that we can learn from what this text is saying. We need to know them. All right, so beginning with verse 3.

Reverence for Parents, the Sabbath, and the Rejection of Idols

How is it that we can be holy as Yahweh our God is holy? Well, first of all, in the first two verses, verses 3 and 4, you have a wide variety of things presented. Every one of you shall reverence his father and his mother, and you shall keep my Sabbaths.

I am Yahweh your God. Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves molten gods. I am Yahweh your God. So right from the beginning, God has given us commandments in regards to the reverencing of father and mother, in regards to that which sets these people apart, especially amongst their pagan neighbors, and that is the keeping of the Sabbath day, and the fact that even to this day, the pagan, who can only live for this world, says, I'm going to get everything I can get, and I'm going to keep at it, and if you aren't going to be able to compete with me seven days out of the week, well, tough for you.

And always it has been a requirement to recognize that God is the one who takes care of us. God is the one who takes care of us. And if God says, keep my Sabbaths, if God says you don't work on that day, then God will take care of you.

You don't have to try to keep up with your pagan neighbor. You don't have to worry about that he's going to have more grain at the end of the season or his animals are going to be better cared for or fatter or anything else.

None of that is relevant. You keep his Sabbaths. He's Yahweh your God. He has commanded you to do this, and by doing this you are demonstrating that your obedience is to him and that he is more important than anything else in your life.

And even though pagan societies diminished the reality of the family, the love that is to exist between parents and children, that is not to mark God's people in any way, shape, or form. And so to demonstrate, to reflect the separateness of what it means to follow after Yahweh, then you reverence your father and your mother.

You keep God's Sabbaths. He is identifying himself with that covenant name. And of course, obviously, do not turn to idols or make for yourself molten gods. Now for us, that seems just almost unnecessary to say, doesn't it?

I mean, it just strikes us as being almost unnecessary to emphasize over and over again the non-making of idols. But again, that just simply demonstrates that A, it's difficult for us to really think about what it was like to live in that time period and to live surrounded by people who had idols with them constantly.

That in the nations that surround Israel, those idols would be everywhere and it was just a part of the way people thought. In fact, it was considered normative. I mean, if you were going to take a journey, there is an idol that would bless you on your journey.

And if you were going to be planting a seed, there would be an idol that had control over that. And it was considered respectful to do proper homage to these particular deities and idols. Even in the time of the New Testament and the Roman Empire, you had all of these different gods.

And the Romans would sacrifice birds and they'd take out the bird entrails and they would read the livers of the birds. And this was supposed to be an indication of future blessings of the Roman gods upon their armies and all these other kinds of things.

And they looked upon Jews and Christians as atheists, as people that are saying there were no gods, as being disrespectful. And so that's what they would hear. You're being disrespectful. And the follower of Yahweh says, no, I'm not being disrespectful.

Those gods don't exist. To give homage to them is to be disrespectful to the one true God who created all things and He is the only one to whom we must turn to seek blessing in anything. So by doing this, the opportunity was automatically opened up when there would be discourse between the people of God and those in the neighboring nations to be able to explain, I'm not being disrespectful because the God you're asking me to respect does not exist.

Let me tell you about the God who does exist. You would not be able to escape that unless you compromised and unless you had one kind of behavior before the world and another kind of behavior in your own land.

Couldn't get away with it if you were consistent in all things. Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves molten gods. I, Yahweh, am your God. And is it really true that this is no longer an issue for us?

Oh, we've said it many times before, but it needs to be understood. If in any way we give to the created things of this world that which belongs to God alone, we have made it an idol in our life. And I can only give you sort of a test that I use for myself as an indication of how you might want to think about this, but you know what you think about in your down time.

Now, it seems to me that in our land we have become so addicted to sound and to distraction that there almost isn't any down time. But when you're not having to concentrate on something and you're not being distracted by a blinking screen, by music, by a news report, whatever else it might be, in that quiet time, to what does your heart turn?

To what do your thoughts turn? What is most important to us? What do we find to truly satisfy us as we think about the future or about our lives, about what our desires are? And if our primary thoughts are upon our things, our activities, rather than upon God and His truth, if that's where our passions are focused, that's where our love and our worship is.

And we may have all the theological T's crossed and I's dotted, but if we can look into our own hearts and recognize that we love things, we love the things of this world, so that if they were taken away, the first thoughts across our hearts would be, Why me, God?

Where is your justice, God? Rather than a recognition of His righteousness and His goodness and our dependence upon Him. That's idolatry. That's idolatry. We are not to make idols, molten gods. Verses 5 -8 is one topic.

Peace Offerings and Having Peace With God

And again, it's one that most of us would just pass by without giving much thought to until you notice the one word. Peace. Peace offerings. What was a peace offering? Think about what a peace offering refers to.

Think about what it draws our mind to. God had provided a way through the sacrifice to deal with transgression and sin to allow His people to dwell in the presence of His holiness. So what was a peace offering?

A shalom offering. Shalom. In Hebrew language, shalom, shalom is not merely a cessation of hostilities. This is important to understand. I think it gives us an insight into how Jesus is called Sar Shalom, Prince of Peace, and how it is in Romans 5 -1 it is said that since we've been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

It's the result of Christ's work. It's something that we have with God. Some of you may recall, I'm not sure if any of you were there. I'm not sure if Rick made it over or not. I don't think so. I know Kelly was there.

But one of the most memorable events I've ever had in now, as of last Saturday, 147 moderated public debates was with Mitchell Pacwa at a large Catholic church in San Diego in January of 1991. I don't even want to ask how many of you were not yet born in 1991.

That would make me feel very old. But January of 1991, we had a debate on justification. And I asked Mitchell Pacwa a question. I wish I could show you the video, but the Roman Catholics have been suppressing it for many, many years now and won't let it go.

But the audio is available anyway. And I asked him a question. And fundamentally, I'll have to sort of boil it down a little bit because it was fairly complex. But within Roman Catholicism, you have something called venial sins and mortal sins.

Mortal sins destroy the grace of justification. Venial sins do not. And I knew something about Mitch Pacwa. He speaks 12 languages, including Hebrew. So I could ask him a question. And the thing I like even to this day about Mitch Pacwa is he's going to give me an honest answer.

I said, if the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, then it would seem that to break the greatest commandment would have to be a mortal sin.

How could breaking the greatest commandment be just a venial sin and breaking lesser commandments be a mortal sin? That doesn't make any sense. And so in light of that, you'd have to admit that before your head touches the pillow this evening, you could commit a mortal sin.

The relationship you have with God could be broken, the grace of justification destroyed, and what that means is you've become an enemy of God. You must admit that you could, before you go to sleep tonight, on the Roman Catholic system, be an enemy of God.

And so in light of that, how could Paul say, therefore we have peace with God, having been justified by faith. When you know, Dr. Pakla, speaker of twelve languages, what shalom means, that shalom is not merely a cessation of hostilities.

There is no shalom in Israel today when there are crews, 24 hours a day, manning the Iron Dome system in Israel. You know what the Iron Dome system is? It's their anti-missile system where they try to shoot down the incoming rockets from wherever they end up coming from.

There are tanks on the border. There are aircraft fueled and ready at all times. Israel is not in a state of peace even if there have been no rocket attacks today, no suicide attacks today, because every Jewish citizen is packing heat.

Every single one of them. That means there's no shalom, there is no wellness of relationship with the neighboring countries, mainly because they don't want there to be any wellness of relationship. But there's no peace.

Peace is not merely a cessation of hostilities. And so I asked Mitch Pacwa, how can you say you have peace when you could become the enemy of God before you sleep this evening? He gave an answer because he had a certain amount of time to ask the question, a certain amount of time to answer.

Then I had a certain amount of time to respond to the answer, and then he had the last word. Sort of like a five-minute segment, as I recall. His answer really didn't address my question, which very often happens in debates.

And so I had the opportunity of refocusing and saying, but this is the real question that I'm asking. And so I made it very clear. How can you have peace? How is this a wellness of relationship when it could end by any action you undertake because you don't believe you've been justified by faith?

And of all the people I've debated, of all the people I've debated, at least I give him the credit for this. You can listen to the audio tape anyways. Like I say, I wish we could watch the video. You can listen to the audio tape, and I finish asking the question.

It goes to him. There's a... for about that long, and then he says, I don't know. Now, see, anybody else I would have debated, Jerry Matitick, somebody like that, would have come up with something. Would have filled his time saying something.

But he was honest enough to see the point of the question and say, I don't know. When we talk about peace offerings in Leviticus 19, what is amazing is that God was concerned about His people knowing that they were at peace with Him all the way from the beginning.

All the way from the beginning, God is recognizing that if His people are going to be His people out of a loving heart, out of a changed nature, they must know they have peace with Him. And if you want a good dividing line between true Christian teaching and false Christian teaching, simply ask a question.

Do the people that adhere to these various systems, do they even believe that they can know that they have peace with God? You see, religious systems that want to control you and want to have certain systems that tell you you do this, this, and this, the one thing they'll never give you is the knowledge of having peace with God.

Oh, you can have peace for a while, but then this happens. No. You see, the Christian message is the reason that you and I have peace with God does not lie within us. It lies within our sin bearer. We look to another.

We don't say, I have peace with God because I'm better than someone else. No. The only reason a Christian can with great humility say, I have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ has done in my place and what the Spirit of God has done within me in drawing me to Jesus Christ, the basis of my peace has nothing to do with my accomplishments.

It has everything to do with His accomplishments. So what this text tells us is that even in that day, God had provided. Now yes, He lays out rules here. It's to be done in a certain way. We're not to abuse what God has provided to us.

But the point is, even from the beginning, God has desired His people to understand that if we, out of a heart of love, follow Him, we do so because we have peace with Him and He is the one who has initiated that relationship of peace.

The world's religions don't understand this. The world's religions will never understand what God has provided for us. And so we begin working through the 19th chapter. And I'm sure that all of you are going to want to just be here early this evening so we can talk about reaping the harvest of your land.

But actually, there's some neat things to see in everything that this text is saying to us. We will continue as we study through it, as Lord gives us opportunity, and as we seek to honor Him. Let's close our time with a word of prayer.